


One Slip

by TheHats



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-15 22:45:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18508609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHats/pseuds/TheHats
Summary: "Travel through time is impossible," said Holmes (who had done it)."Improbable," said Watson (who had not).The man from the river looked at everything as if it spoke a language he was burning to learn. And soon, John realized he was looking at him in the same way.





	1. The River

The play was mediocre, which was, in all fairness, a pleasant surprise. Sherlock lounged in his seat in the reserved box, steepled fingers resting against his lips. He knew the writer, had helped rescue the man from his less scrupulous creditors a year ago, and was here as a favor. But he’d long since lost interest in the actors and their staid dialogue. Every once in a while, a clever quip brought his attention back, but for the most part, he was entertaining himself with the features of the audience. 

There, in the front row, that woman was a lady of the evening here with a patron, wearing what Sherlock suspected to be his wife’s gown. The hat was her own, though, as were her shoes. A row behind, that man was a milliner, from France by way of… perhaps Edinborough, if he was right about the provenance of that lace. He’d never made a study of lace, perhaps he ought to do so.

And in the box across from him, a curious case. The lone man there was clean-shaven and sharp-featured, hair only just beginning to frost. Nothing of the worker about his small, neat hands, but Sherlock could not place his clothing. The dark suit wasn’t cut like that of an accountant, nor a solicitor. Perhaps a society man of some sort, though he’d had seen nothing of that fashion in those circles either. There were always those trying to set their own trends, but still. Something about him kept drawing Sherlock’s eyes back. 

The final act had just begun when the stranger pulled something from inside his jacket, a tile of some sort, glossy and black. He regarded it with a dubious expression, and Sherlock frowned as it reflected a faint light onto his face. He couldn’t see where the light came from, however - the theatre was almost entirely dark. He tapped the tile a number of times, the motion precise if senseless, and held it up, towards the stage where the leading lady was shaking her fist like a hawker at her cohort.

Abruptly, the theater lit up in a silent flash, like a bolt of lightning or a magnesium flare. For a moment, the audience merely made an impressed sound, but they were quick to realize that the actors onstage were just as startled as they were. Had Sherlock not been looking right at the odd gentleman, he might have been confused about the source as well. But he had seen that flash come from the tile in his hand, an inexplicable burst of pure, white light in perfect silence. Sherlock was still blinking the blue dazzle of after-image from his eyes when he realized the gentleman was moving, getting swiftly to his feet.

Onstage, the performance was limping back to its feet, its confused audience resettling itself with a soft rumble, but Sherlock was already out of his seat, ducking through the curtain and out of his own box. He slowed his pace just a little as he reached the foyer, pausing to check his watch. From the corner of his eye, he saw the short, slight man leave through the theatre’s bronze front doors, moving swiftly, and turn to his right down the street. Not towards the rank of waiting cabs, then. Interesting.

After a prudent number of seconds, Sherlock set himself to following him. He was well in-practice in stealthy pursuit, so it was a matter of simple habit to keep other pedestrians between them, observe his quarry in the reflections of the wet street, and change the set of his shoulders often, so his silhouette wouldn’t give him away. The slight man didn’t seem to think anyone might be following at all, at any rate. 

Sherlock followed him along Holywell, through the cut to the Strand, and down Norfolk street. He crossed the lane there and came around the corner just in time to all but run into his stranger.

The man spared him a glance, but he was looking at his tile once again. He put it away quickly, but not before Sherlock saw the large, illuminated numbers on its surface. The time? 

“Can’t catch them all, Holmes,” said the stranger in an lazy accent that only barely knew London. Sherlock looked sharply into his face, taken off-guard. He was looking back, crinkled eyes merry in a way that seemed to bode no good for anyone. “Better luck next time.” 

A chime of some sort, tinny and odd, sounded from the black tile, and the stranger lifted an arm as if to hail a cab. But instead of reaching towards the street, he took hold of- of something in the air, an ephemeral corner of nothing that he pulled down like ripping paper off of a wall. Then there was a gap, like a tear in the air between then. It distorted the smile of the stranger as he waved his fingers at Sherlock.

It was impulse, the moment he saw the man step forward, begin to step into that gap. What was happening made no sense, offended reason, but Sherlock knew if he lost the stranger, there would never, ever be an answer to any of the questions that flooded him this second. So he lunged, straight into that gap. He caught the stranger’s coat, and felt them both begin to fall.

They fell together. There was a slipping, and his hand was empty.

He fell alone. Into.

\---

Water slapped against the sides of the little punt as Watson rowed, back bending again and again to pull against the oars. The little wind that had picked up was a blessing - it cooled the sun that beat on his shoulders and dried the sweat that soaked his tan shirt. He watched the wake he was leaving as he rowed, only an occasional glance over his shoulder disrupting his rhythm. It was risky, a boat so small this far from the bank on the Thames in midday traffic, but he wanted space. Wanted the clean stretch and strain of long strokes.

In the shadow of a bridge, he paused to drink from his water bottle and wipe his face, letting the oars trail in the water as the current tried to turn him around, take away the distance he’d gained. He rubbed his shoulder - it ached, but he wasn’t near his limit yet. Another mile upriver. Therapeutic exercise was supposed to reach your limits, wasn’t it? 

He took up the oars again, rocking them back and forth to settle his grip, and was leaning forward into the first stroke when the splash slapped him in the face. Glasses drenched, he was blinded momentarily, but he thought he’d seen something large… Watson shook the water from his eyes, shooting a look up at the bridge deck so high above him. The rail. 

Half-standing with his heart in his throat, he steadied himself against the little boat’s bench as he frantically looked around. The rings were still spreading from whatever had hit the water, but he saw nothing on its choppy brown surface. No struggle, no debris, no body.

Wait.

Holding tight to one wooden oar, Watson was in the water the moment he was sure what he’d seen. The Thames suddenly seemed much colder and darker and more turbulent, the moment he was no longer in his little punt, but it gave up its newest secret without fuss - Watson’s hand closed on the hand he’d seen. That hand gave him an arm, the arm a shoulder, and the shoulder a head. Oar clamped tight under one arm for flotation, Watson forced the heavy body to the surface, wrapped an arm around its chest. 

When the man coughed, Watson couldn’t stop himself from shouting in relief. His legs kicked, treading water, keeping them both upright, and he held him tight. “I’ve got you,” he panted, looking around for his boat. “I’ve got you.”

\---

Sherlock could not comprehend how he’d gotten into the river. One moment falling, the feeling of cloth being ripped from his fingers, and the next cold and at the mercy of a very strong arm around his chest, a hoarse voice in his ear. He couldn’t even turn around to see his rescuer - when he tried, the man snapped that if he moved his neck, he’d drop him right here and let him sink. 

Since he’d obviously suffered some kind of head injury, he could perhaps see the wisdom in that.

Without lifting his head, Sherlock tried to place where they were. He was being pulled backwards through the water as the other man swam one-handed, and he could see the piers of two bridges. He recognized one, so this was certainly the Thames, and not too far from where he’d seen that extraordinary- Hadn’t it been night?

“Talk to me, okay?” said the voice behind his ear. “You might have a concussion.”

“I must,” croaked Sherlock. His throat felt ragged, as if he’d been screaming. The city sounded wrong, above the slap of water. “I don’t- I don’t remember anything since last night.”

The man kept swimming, though Sherlock thought he heard pain in his breathing too. “Can you tell me your name? What year it is?”

“Holmes, Sherlock Holmes.” He was relieved to find the answers coming without effort. “And it’s eighteen ninety-five.”

 

\---

Watson nearly missed hearing that second answer, since that was the moment he spotted the police boat idling near the docks. He couldn’t spare an arm to wave, but he stopped pulling towards shore, kicking forcefully to get a little more height out of the water. 

“Over here!” He put all the force he could into the shout, his chain of command shout. As out of breath as he was, he didn’t know if he could have done it again, but once was enough. An arm on the boat went up, all their faces turning towards him, and their engine revved as the bow turned towards them. In minutes, he was handing his rescuee up the blue side of the boat.

“Careful of his neck!” he shouted, as more hands reached down to help him up the rope ladder. “He hit his head, definitely a concussion.” As soon as he made the deck, he tried to shake off his helpers, but they insistently pushed him down onto a bench. One of the crew was already kneeling by Holmes, who lay alert but limp on the steel plating. His eyes darted back and forth at the uniforms, the boat, the kit they were opening beside his head. 

Watson saw his hands spread out on the deck and was already moving forward when Holmes tried to sit up. He put a hand flat on his chest and another on the side of his neck, ready to use his weight to hold him down if he had to. “Don’t move!” he insisted. “You could have hurt your neck.”

Grey eyes blinked up at him. “My neck doesn’t hurt,” he said stiffly. “Although my head does.” 

“Were you two in a boat?” asked the police medic, who was hastily unwinding the velcro on a neckbrace. Watson was glad to see it. 

“No, I think he fell off of the bridge.” Watson nodded up, at the span well upriver of them. He hadn’t realized how far they’d been swept while he’d tried to swim. He couldn’t see his boat anywhere. “I was rowing, he nearly landed on me. Let me help, I’m a doctor,” he added, with a glance at the kit.

Together as the watercraft got moving again, he and the policeman got the brace onto Holmes and the man onto a backboard, despite his protests. That was when he noticed that oddity of his clothes - a water-bedraggled bowtie over a high white collar they had to cut open. A tailcoat. White spats, one flopping loose over his stockinged foot - Holmes had lost a shoe. Watson had kicked off both of his. 

“Costume party last night?” asked the policeman, who’d clearly just noticed the same things. 

“Theatre,” said Holmes, and Watson thought he was more irritated than in pain now. “I was at the Opera Comique.” 

“Were you with anyone? Plans to go drinking?” He tapped his flashlight to get the man to look at it, and shone it into one eye, then the other. 

“No, to both. I followed a man out, but I don’t remember-” He trailed off, and Watson spotted something in those gray eyes again. Confusion. Fear too, he thought. This was not a man used to being confused. 

\---

Sherlock was more concerned by the moment about how hard he had hit his head. The pain was minor, but so many things made no sense. The men aboard the boat wore patches that said they belonged to the Marine Policing Unit of London, and were clearly well-disciplined and organized, but he’d never heard of such an operation. And they wore odd accessories, bulky suspenders with a red tag that said to pull in case of emergency. 

Their boat was unlike anything he’d ever seen, and its engine whined at a pitch most unlike the clunking diesels he was used to. The little light that the policeman had shone into his eyes - had that been one of the new electric torches they had in America? He hadn’t heard they could be made so small. He would have given anything to be able to turn his head, to look around, gather more data.

Every thought he was having was arrested when, as the craft was slowing to dock, a massive silver shape flew above them with a deliberate, ponderous speed and a tearing noise. It was very high up, but he had the impression that it was enormous, as long as a dozen train cars. And it was flying. 

Only when it had left his field of view did he blink, or shut his mouth. He swallowed to wet it, and found his rescuer again, still sitting beside his head. The policemen had given him a blanket and even that was odd, metallic and glossy, silver and red. “Something is very wrong,” he said, voice rough. “Am I in London?” 

He nodded, looking down at him with a serious expression. “Is that where you were last night?”

“Yes,” he answered, and looked to the side, where he could finally see the buildings that towered above them. “But not like this.”


	2. The Motorway

Watson rolled his paper cup of coffee in his hands, the heat in it long since dissipated. The receptionist at the desk kept glancing towards him, a little line between her brows, but she’d knocked off suggesting he leave and check back later, at least. Maybe that was good news. He had asked and reasoned and shouted and stopped short (just) of making threats. He was waiting, and he would wait as long as it took.

He was rolling the cup to the pace of some beeping machine deep in the corridors of the hospital. Fingers to palm, palm to fingers. Smooth. Keeping his hands light, even when a door somewhere out of sight crashed and let out a brief gale of shouting. The wheels of a gurney. The rapid beat of running shoes. He knew all the sounds of this hospital, even if today, it smelled a little too much to him like dust and blood.

He took a sip from his cold, nearly empty cup, gritty with sugar and creamer, and flooded away the dust with the bitter, over-brewed coffee. There was no dust here. He was not trapped here, stuck in a bed in fever heat. He forced himself to sit back, rolling his shoulder to ease it. He lobbed his cup into the nearest bin, and when he looked up again, Sherlock Holmes was there.

He looked very different in new clothes, a generic plain jumper and jeans that showed two inches of sock. The open collar made him look younger, and his hair looked so different dry that Watson almost doubted his face. Wet, it had been seal-sleek and inky. Dry, it was a very dark, very warm brown, in waves that softened the hard brow and cheekbones.

Even his eyes were changed. The cut-steel gray was the same, but there was nothing left of the concussed, confused look, the wandering searching daze. Instead, a razor-sharp stare latched onto Watson, and the man tilted his head towards him.

“I wasn’t sure you’d remember me,” said Watson, rising to his feet. He wiped his hand on his trousers, and held it out. “John Watson. I didn’t get to introduce myself before.”

Holmes set down a pair of shoes and took the hand, his shake crisp and dry. He did not immediately let go, but tipped Watson’s hand from side to side slightly, looking down at it. “Military,” he said after a hesitation. It was not a question, but it could have been. 

“Discharged,” he answered with a nod. “Just a doctor, now.”

That gray expression sharpened, hardened like clay firing. Watson wondered which word had done it, and let go of his hand.

“What kind of doctor?” Holmes asked, a hard edge under his voice. 

“General surgery,” he answered, and saw that edge dissolve immediately. Interesting. “Mostly just clinic work, now. I’m a locum here, at the out-patient clinic.”

Holmes’s eyes slowly travelled down him, in a way that Watson wasn’t sure how to interpret. He was used to interest, but this felt like something more than that. Measurement. Or the calibration of an intricate instrument.

“A clinic doctor with time on a workday to spend waiting for a stranger in a mental institution?” he asked, tone quite carefully neutral.

Watson let himself take a little step back from that gaze, leaning back onto his heels. “It’s a hospital, first off. Not a ‘mental institution,’” he pointed out. “And it’s my day off.” He frowned at himself, and shrugged and went on. This would come out anyway. “I looked up your file. You didn’t have any contact listed.” That was a violation, a legally actionable offense, but he’d felt compelled. Invested. 

Holmes angled his head, evaluating. “You’re the one who told them I leapt off that bridge, aren’t you?” he asked.

Watson blinked. “I… might have done,” he admitted, with a question in his voice. “I’m not sure what I told the marine police. I didn’t tell the EMTs anything like that. I was mostly worried about your neck.” Because he had assumed he leapt off the bridge. He’d looked it up - not an unsurvivable height, but certainly a dangerous one. “So they put you on a hold.”

“That’s what they’ve called it,” he said, wrinkling his straight nose. “Very congenial for involuntary confinement, but it was very… inconvenient.”

“I’m sure that’s an understatement,” said Watson, feeling his voice lower a note in sympathy. “So let’s call me being here an apology. Can I offer you a ride home?”

Another extraordinary expression crossed Holmes’s face, this one an evaluation accompanied by a glance towards the distracted receptionist. When he looked back at Watson, he marvelled. He could actually see the lie he was about to hear settling into place.

“No, that’s not necessary,” said Holmes casually. “I have transport I can contact.”

“Transport you can contact,” Watson repeated dryly. “All right. Well, if you have everything, let me save you some of the trip.”

Holmes picked up his shoes again. They were water-ruined, Watson could see, and looked expensive. The paper bag with them he tucked under his arm like a heavy parcel. He nodded, Watson gestured, and they headed for the street.

\---

Sherlock braced himself as they left the so-called hospital, but the noise of this new London still went straight under his skin like an unseen sliver of glass. The building faced directly onto the street, and the automobiles were racing by just a few feet away. Each engine was surprisingly quiet, compared to the few he’d seen before, but their sheer numbers made a furor like the sea, an unending thunder.

His three days in the hospital, as onerous as he’d found the enforced idleness, had given him a little span of time to understand what had happened to him. He’d been thrilled to find a London Times, but the date at the top of the page had been ludicrous, and the suspicion and paranoia that had taken hold of him like a wrestler had clouded his judgement. He’d interrogated the staff and other patients and made a half-considered attempt to escape. That had gotten him locked into a room with little more than a bed and a wire-bound window he could not break. 

He’d stared out of that window from evening through to sunrise, unsleeping. He’d watched more of the great flying machines until they were just lights in the dark above the illuminated city. So many that he’d been able to discern they were flying on a prescribed pattern. He’d watched the regulated streams of traffic below them, all gaudily lit up as well. Hundreds, even thousands of the horseless automobiles, so many he wondered that there were no collisions. His view included a corner of pavement at an intersection, and there he’d seen pedestrians in all manner of clothing, from nearly familiar to wildly exotic. 

Even now, a pair of young men brushed past him and Doctor Watson, wearing bright gaudy sweaters, like those of dockworkers saving the color, and shoes upholstered like sofas, their hair cut short and spiked. They had the smooth white hands and the accents of students, but their dress said nothing at all to Holmes about who they might be.

Nothing in this London said anything to him, for all its unreasonable noise. He followed Watson across the busy street and even that was a strange experience. They waited patiently at a bit of painted kerb, until a red lamp went out and a green one illuminated. The vehicles all stopped, and Watson and Sherlock crossed, just as if a policeman had been directing it. He looked at the light pole as they walked past it, but could see no way it was controlled. Perhaps a clockwork, hidden inside. 

Watson led him to a building like a great pavillion, with multiple stories of open tiers. When they entered, Sherlock realized it was absolutely cavernous and filled with nothing but automobiles, row after row in perfect order, each one centered between painted lines. He nodded, appreciating the organization. Horses might have been gone from the city, but even these things needed to be stabled, it seemed. 

Watson glanced at him, and lead him to a pair of dull metal doors. He touched a roundel on the wall and they slid open. Inside was a very small room, and Watson stepped right inside, turning around to face back the way he’d come. When Sherlock had joined him, he touched another button, which lit up, and the doors slid shut. A moment later, the tiny room gave a shudder and began to rise, and Holmes nodded as the information slid into place. This was a lift. A very smooth one, entirely enclosed and self-operated, but at least familiar. 

In just a few seconds, a bell chimed and the doors opened again onto another broad swath of parked automobiles. Sherlock paused, looking out the windows beside the lift, but they were indeed on a higher floor. Much higher. The fifth story, he thought. He looked around for an exit the automobiles could take as he followed Watson, but didn’t immediately see one.

Watson soon pulled a jangle of keys out of his jacket pocket, and pointed them at a row of vehicles. One of them, a rounded, low automobile painted a dark, glossy blue, chirped an odd sound. Red lanterns at its rear flashed. 

“This one’s mine,” he said unnecessarily, gesturing Sherlock to the left-hand side. “You got a destination for me, yet?”

The door latch took Sherlock a moment, and Watson was looking at him when he angled himself into the uncomfortably small interior.

“You don’t, do you?” he asked in a new tone, a tone Sherlock couldn’t read.

Sherlock frowned down at the bag in his hands. “If you could take me to King’s Cross, I’ll find my own way,” he said. King’s Cross Station still existed, he knew. It had been mentioned in the paper with the alarming date. So that was safe to mention.

“You said eighteen ninety-five,” said Watson gravely. 

Sherlock deliberately kept looking down, rubbing the coarsened leather of his shoe with a thumb. “It is June, two thousand and nineteen,” he said, giving nothing away with his face and voice. “And I am from Sussex. The hospital gave me train fare.” He didn’t understand how the stiff little card he’d been given would amount to train fare, but he trusted that would become obvious in context. Much seemed to.

“You told me in the water that it was 1895,” repeated Watson. “And I saw your clothes.” He glanced at the ruined brogues. “And I looked up the Opera Comique. It closed in 1902.” Sherlock heard his voice soften further. But not, he realized gladly, in the way the voice of the psychiatric doctor in the hospital had. 

“Travel through time is impossible,” said Sherlock, despite the way it felt as if something inside himself was unfolding. Watson, this near stranger, was not looking at him like a muttering madman nor a stubborn child. Not at all. And Sherlock realized that he was looking up at Watson, no longer at his hands. Those blue eyes were fixed on him with a weight of concern that Sherlock was quite sure he could physically feel, as though the man had set his hand on his shoulder. 

“Improbable,” said Watson, settling into his seat, half-turned to face him. “I’ve learned to be skeptical of the word impossible. Usually in medical situations, but… can you tell me about it?”

“I… cannot,” said Sherlock frankly, letting his hands fall open atop the bag. “Not in any useful detail. I followed a man from the theatre, down a busy street. I grabbed his sleeve.” He sought the words to describe what happened next but had no better luck with that that than he had in the past three days. “And then I was in the river. I did not jump,” he added, feeling the harshness return to his voice. The staff at the hospital had tried to convince him otherwise, for three very long days. “We were on Norfolk Street. Yards from the river and a mile from that bridge.”

Watson nodded. “An accident?” He looked forward, out the front pane of the automobile, mouth pursed in thought. “Makes sense, I suppose.” 

The simple practical tone of his voice startled Sherlock into a laugh. “Does it?”

“Well, yeah,” said Watson, with a philosophical toss of his head. “If anyone could time travel on purpose, ever in the past or future, we’d all know by now.” He put a key into a slot beneath the wheel in front of him, and the auto came to life with a gentle rumble. “And someone would have come to Stephen Hawking’s party.”

\---

Watson was taking Holmes home. He’d decided he would in the elevator, at the tiny expression of realization, and had been certain when he’d seen the awkward way he slid into the passenger seat of his little Vauxhall Omega. Watson knew a great deal about muscle memory, but had never imagined how loudly a lack of it could speak. Holme’s lean body screamed about a world of very different shapes, in a way Watson could not possibly describe.

As they drove down the ramps out of the car-park, he watched him out of the corner of his eye. Holmes kept a grip on the handle of the door, and didn’t put on his seatbelt until he saw Watson do up his own. When they merged into traffic and picked up speed, he saw the tendon on the side of the man’s neck stand out.

“Do you have any theories, even if you can’t describe it?” Watson asked him as he set his phone on its cradle in the dashboard. Holmes’s eyes flicked to it, and he frowned faintly.

“None. But I am certain the man I followed was from your time.” He nodded towards the phone. “He had something like that on him. He used it at the play, though I don’t know to what end. What is it?”

“A smartphone?” Watson touched it, bringing up the screen. It had linked to the car automatically, and was showing a moving map of where they were. “It’s, well, it’s a communications tool. I can talk to people, send messages, look things up, or see where I am- it’s very versatile.” He smiled a little, off-center. “They kind of took over everything, last ten years or so. Right now, it’s showing our location.”

Holmes’s finely-sketched brows rose. “Tracking us? Can it track anyone?” he asked, tone a perfectly rational mix of thrilled and appalled. 

“No. Well, sort of, bu not on its own.” Watson wasn’t sure he wanted to explain satellites just yet or apps or government surveillance. He couldn’t remember if radio transmitters were a thing yet, in 1895. “But if I needed directions, I could ask it and it would give me turn-by-turn instructions.”

“That sounds very useful for a traveller,” said Holmes, leaning forward to take a closer look. 

By the time they reached the motorway, Watson had explained what he could of wireless communication (Holmes had heard of Marconi’s work, but only that he was making bells ring remotely on a farm in Italy), texting, and Wikipedia. This last had Holmes fascinated, and he was carefully pecking at the screen with a fingertip.

“If you tap the little microphone - the icon on the lower row - it looks a little like an Egyptian cartouche? You can just say aloud what you want to type. Speak clearly into the screen,” he clarified, without looking over since he was accelerating to match the flow, enjoying the feeling of being pushed back into his seat. He didn't hear anything from his passenger as he merged across one lane, then another to where he wanted to be. “Did you find the icon?”

When he could finally glance over, the expression on Holmes’s face startled him. He wore a rictus of alarm, both hands clutching tight to the strap of his seat belt, staring forward at the motorway. Watson looked back. Traffic wasn’t bad, but the road was a little crowded, and a fleet of lorries seemed to have taken up station in the lane beside his. 

“Is this… a normal rate of speed?” asked Holmes, voice slightly faint. Watson checked his pace, and nodded. 

“I’d like to be going faster, but not around all of these.” He waved to one of the trucks, its bulk looming in the driver-side window. He flicked a look back, and realized. “- Sorry,” he said, suddenly sheepish.

\---

 

“Sorry,” Watson said to him. Holmes tightened his grip on the belt, finally understanding why they wore them. He had to keep his eyes fixed on the other cars. If he looked at the ground or the scenery whipping past, he was very sure he would be sick. This was an impossible speed, and the other vehicles were all so dangerously close. A swerve of just inches to either direction and they were destined for catastrophe, he was sure. The painted lines guided them, but they couldn’t do a thing to defend from the inevitable human error. 

Jaw clenched so tightly it ached, he made himself look away from the nearest automobile - it was the size of a train car and he could have reached out the window and touched it - to glance at Watson, who seemed utterly unruffled by their reckless pace. He controlled the vehicle with just slight motions of the wheel, maintaining their position like an expert horseman. He wanted to find that comforting. In that role, the man exuded effortless confidence, as if what he were doing took no thought. 

Perhaps if they were alone on the avenue, he could have been easy about it. But it was a packed jostle of machines, all of them hurtling along like logs in a madly flooding river, or beasts in a stampede. How could they even stop? 

“We’re going about sixty miles an hour,” offered Watson. “If there’s not a slow-down, we’ll only be on the motorway about another ten minutes, and then we can slow down. How fast do trains go?”

Sherlock took a deep breath, taking a moment to answer his question. “The Flying Scotsman can run that pace, if they need to.” And he had ridden that line. “But it never felt this rapid.” Reckless, he managed not to say. 

“We’re a lot smaller than a train. And I know I accelerated faster, sorry. But this is pretty typical for this time.” 

Slowly, Sherlock forced his hands to unclench. “Are the trains no longer sufficient?” Making himself look around, he could see many automobiles like this one, small with one or two people in them. There was a larger transport, with a dozen heads visible in rows like a train car. And those large ones must be for freight. 

“No, they’re not.” Watson sounded regretful. “It’d be nice, cars are ridiculously wasteful, hard to park, and just expensive, but London has… oh, something like eight million people, right now.”

Sherlock nodded slowly. It had neared six million in his own time, and the journals had ranted daily about congestion and the unholy crowding in the poorer districts. “So the growth has slowed. That is probably for the best. But if trains served six million, it seems they could serve eight.”

“You’d have to ask someone else about that. I’m not a civil engineer.” Watson nodded good-naturedly, and flashed Sherlock a smile. His manner seemed to have gotten easier and easier, the longer he drove his machine.

“You’re enjoying this.” Sherlock was not fond of pointing out the obvious, but this bore mentioning. He gestured forward, at the road. “This?”

Watson nodded, and chuckled. “I almost never drove, before the army. Or in it. But after I got out, I had placed I needed to be and a schedule I needed to keep, and… and I’d written off a few transit options.”

That phrasing took Sherlock a second to parse, but once he had, he looked back at Watson. That smile hadn’t faded, but it had taken on a new facet. Rue, perhaps, or confronted shame. 

“So I got this. And I learned I love to drive.” He drummed his fingers and looked over his shoulder. Seeing they weren’t being overtaken, Sherlock assumed, he twitched the wheel and they swerved from one painted lane into the adjacent one, closer to Sherlock’s side of the avenue. 

“So you drive for sport?” 

“I suppose so.” He looked over, a little longer than Sherlock thought was prudent. “I’d have to look up the dates, but there were cars in your time, weren’t there?”

In your time. Sherlock felt a strange sort of pressure in his chest at that phrasing, as if the world as he’d known it was suddenly a foreign country, and he an emigree. And wasn’t that true? Worse - an emigree with no immediate prospects to return. He was no longer sure that the vertigo he felt had anything to do with their speedy travel.


End file.
